Feminism Friday: Rape Jokes Aren't Funny

Late, I know, and not much from me: I'm just pointing you at these three posts below from Melissa McEwan at Shakesville.

Trauma-Trigger Alert: Melissa describes her own rape in harrowing detail in order to point out how rape is not funny, and although the discussion threads start out thoughtful and interesting, they end up invaded by shockjock fans who troll the thread with graphic threats of rape directed against Melissa and other commenters.

Aren't we feminists lucky, we get some cyberbullying to go with the defense of rape jokes as well!

Melissa has decided not to delete them in order to show just what sort of threats these jerks perceive as "jokes" that we "need to get a sense of humour" about.


Rape Is Hilarious
Rape Is Hilarious Part II
Rape Is Not Only Hilarious; It's No Big Deal

Cyberbullying:
Kate Harding has a great post in response to the cyberbullying. Let those folks read it who claim that men bloggers get flamed and threatened just as much and as creepily as women bloggers. Suuurrrre they do.

As usual for Feminism Friday, feel free to leave a link to recent Feminism Friday posts from other blogs in comments - your own or others.

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Feminism Friday

I haven't managed to come up with a particular Feminism Friday post myself this week. Luckily I came across a couple to recommend:

A specific Feminism Friday post from Erimentha on melding Western feminist theory with Indian feminist action: Here and Now

A serendipitous find - a thoughtful post and thread from an Anabaptist blog on "The Problem with Feminism"

Updated to Add: Feminism and Rape - two posts from Feministe that discuss why rape victims are subject to so much more scrutiny and skepticism than victims of other crimes, and why so many people are comfortable with failing to distinguish between accusations that cannot be proven in court and false accusations from lying women.

The first is a 2003 post from Lauren, written in response to the press about the Kobe Bryant case, relating how she was raped as a teenager and why she didn't tell anyone at the time, much less report it to police.

The second is a post from Jill, in response to the dropping of charges against the three charged men in the Duke rape case. Warning - the thread is already 200+ comments long, and the anti-feminists are out in force.

FAQ: Does feminism matter?

Updated 22Mar07

Hell yes.

1. Society deals with gender in a way that, on balance, harms women.
2. This is a problem that must be corrected.

[yami (Green Gabbro): Feminisms]

Related reading:
All FAQ articles below have links to further reading on other sites

Harm to women:
FAQ:Isn't feminism just playing "victim" politics?

Gender inequity:
FAQ:What is male privilege?
FAQ: What is the "Gender Gap"?

Clarifying Concepts

Feminist Theory in Liberal Arts Courses
What is Feminism (and why do we have to talk about it so much)?


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FAQ: Isn't feminism just "victim" politics?

updated 01May07

No. Women as a class are subjected to real hardship and oppression just because they are women. This is unjust. Pointing out that women are disproportionately victimised is accurate analysis, not "playing victim".

Witchy-Woo on the "will you women just stop whining" subtext:

I think that those who would rather avoid acknowledging the global injustices that women face, those who deem themselves successful in the struggle, those who find it easier to accuse us of ‘whining’ rather than critically examining their own role in those injustices when we speak about them, are further enabled in their deliberate ignorance by the “you can help yourself” school of thought. Individual solutions for collective problems don’t work.

Not everyone can help themselves. Should we stop speaking about that because it’s percieved as ‘whining’? Many, many women actually are victims - and many more still are survivors - should we, as feminists, really be saying “shit happens, get over it - I have” when, globally, the making of women as victims (and survivors) is systemic and political? I’m thinking, not.

I’m thinking the “stop whining” response is one that comes from those who’d like to close us down, shut us up, make us be quiet.

Read the whole thing.

Kevin T. Keith posted the following list from the UN about the worldwide traditions of impunity for violence committed against women:

• Violence against women is the most common but least punished crime in the world.

• It is estimated that between 113 million and 200 million women are demographically “missing.” They have been the victims of infanticide (boys are preferred to girls) or have not received the same amount of food and medical attention as their brothers and fathers.

• The number of women forced or sold into prostitution is estimated worldwide at anywhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 per year. Profits from sex slavery are estimated at seven to twelve billion US dollars per year.

• Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined.

• At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her. Domestic violence is the largest form of abuse of women worldwide, irrespective of region, culture, ethnicity, education, class and religion.

• It is estimated that more than two million girls are genitally mutilated per year, a rate of one girl every fifteen seconds.

• Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world’s conflicts. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.

• Studies show the increasing links between violence against women and HIV and demonstrate that HIV-infected women are more likely to have experienced violence, and that victims of violence are at higher risk of HIV infection.

KTK (Sufficent Scruples) then analysed how sexism leads to inequities in healthcare provision for women.

Ginmar (A View From A Broad) wraps the whole issue up in a gloriously clarified rant: One Simple Thing

Society is based on the notion that women are things to be used up and discarded. Therefore, while it is possible to work within a framework of society, one has to be very careful as to how one goes about it. Feminism is nothing less than an insurgency in society, disturbing the very framework of our lives. You have to brace yourself for hostility and hatred when you're an avowed feminist. You're disturbing people who've never much thought about women except when those damned women didn't do what they were supposed to.

There's a lot more to read on women's oppression. It really exists.